The warden - Search for a star animation

The warden of the dungeon is a wraith, forever bound to the remains of his former body. He exists to protect a dungeon that is holding a valuable secret. His curse began hundreds of years ago when he was defeated and his own sword was plunged to his chest and pinned to the wall of the dungeon. Since then his body still hangs on the wall and the curse does not allow the spirit to leave it… unless it has to defeat whoever tries to enter the dungeon.

First person point video - 

Other perspective -

Side camera - 

Side camera again - wraith only -

The warden is a spirit full of hatred and deadly to anyone who trespasses his way. The idea is heavily inspired by the RPG horror/survival genre in games. Mainly by games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne and The Witcher.

I am a huge fan of the horror genre in movies and a big fan of RPGs in games. This project is a combination of both factors. I wanted to create an animation for an npc, that you could find in Dark Souls. Apart from its looks it had to move unnaturally and to portray an immediate sense of danger and horror when the player first meets it.

The animation sequence for the warden is an idle state where the ghost twitches, comes out of the body and looks around. In the next state he breaks the sword out of his body, floats forward and conjures the sword using magic. The attack phase is next where he performs a quick combo and supposedly kills his enemy. The last state is a magic explosion, that occurs when he has finished his job. The explosion pins him back to the wall and the sword flies back and stabs him to the wall, going back to idle.

Working on this project has been incredibly fun for me but also a challenge. It is the first time that I animate a floating swordsman character. I enjoyed fully using my imagination for this submission.  I  did have some problems during the way, but at the end of the day, thanks to them I learn. I will definitely come back to this project. I want to create a first person animation, where he grabs the camera, slams it to the ground and starts clawing at it. I would love to see this rig in engine and I will try to modify it to make it game ready (without loosing much of its functionality hopefully).